Anger: an alienating communication hazard for nurses.

Abstract

In summary, the following information seems to be available to us. We know how alienation occurs generally; that nurses do report becoming alienated and behave as if they were alienated; and that alienation tends to be activated for nurses in the presence of three communicative variable--facts, feelings, and force, as described above. While further research is needed, the investigations that have already been carried out strongly suggest a need for planned intervention to help nurses deal with communications, particularly angry or critical ones, from supervisors and others in some way other than by withdrawing into alienation. Some preliminary attempts have been made in this direction, but describing these is not within the scope of this article. Nurses and their superordinate colleagues might well ponder interventions of their own, however; the chronic problems of turnover and shortage would appear too important to leave to the examination of individual researchers. After all, it is practicing nurses at all levels who both need to resolve these problems and have any chance of doing so.